1. Amsterdam: November 1632. Birth in the war-torn northern Netherlands -- A Jewish destiny -- Dissimulation and blessedness -- The trouble with women. 2. Amsterdam: 1632-42. Earliest impressions -- The attractions and tensions of a fashionable city -- The bright boy and the family business -- Death and the ziel. 3. Amsterdam: 1643-56. A synagogue education -- A political crisis -- War -- Non-Jewish intellectual attractions -- An unwilling merchant -- Cast out of synagogue, family and means of livelihood. 4. Amsterdam (and Ouderkerk?): 1656-60. Lost wealth -- Lost honour -- A little girl -- Mathematics and the search for a simple, universal religion -- Optics -- The genesis of a philosophy. 5. Rijnsburg: 1660-2. University rejected -- Enthusiasm endured -- International respect -- Writerly frustration. 6. Rijnsburg and Voorburg: 1662-4. A society of the kind that is desirable -- The expert on Descartes -- Plague and other deadly diseases.
7. Voorburg: 1664-5. Close affection and hostile acquaintance -- A session with Calvin's envoy -- War with England -- The trouble with women. 8. Voorburg: 1666-9. Self esteem and sleight of pen -- Impious doctrines -- State-sanctioned murder. 9. The Hague: 1670-2. War with France -- A new source of support for Spinoza, unfortunately French -- New intellectual stimuli -- A family at last -- Organist upsurge and the underside of the Hague. 10. The Hague and Utrecht: 1673. Stadholderate restored -- A submerging of peace and honour -- Common affection and uncommon persecution. 11. The Hague: 1674-5. The testing of a metaphysic -- The testing of a temperament -- The wages of unreason -- The truth about Spinoza's atheism -- Ethics gathers dust. 12. The Hague: 1676-7. A passion for freedom -- More problems for reason -- A second-best republic -- The trouble with women -- Of human bondage -- What friends are for.
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